The gentleman above is Mehmet Scholl, the ex-Bayern Munich and German international player.

Scholl is similar to his Scottish counterpart in that he likes to listen to some half decent tunes. I say half decent because unlike Nevin his selections are not the most eclectic or avant-guarde, but it is still stuff that you would hear on 6 Music.

Before we continue - Thank you Nick from Fisted Away for the scouting.

I’m not going to do a full bio on Scholl’s footballing career, but I will do a quick recap:
Mehmet Scholl is one of the most successful German football players of all time, during his career the attacking midfielder won eight German Championships with Bayern Munich, as well as the UEFA (Europa) Cup and the Champions League trophy. He was also part of the German national team which won Euro ’96.

It’s obviously the musical angle we are looking at and with a couple of mixtapes (compilation albums) in which Scholl was responsible for selecting the tracks.

“In May 2002 and October 2003, he released two successful mixtapes, featuring his favourite bands. The compilation’s title “Mehmet Scholl kompiliert – Vor dem Spiel ist nach dem Spiel” is a reference to Sepp Herberger’s famous expression “nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel” (“after the game is before the game”). In an interview, Scholl said he chose this title because he listens to this music before the game, after the game, in the car on the way to the stadium, and in the car when leaving the stadium.

The first volume includes songs by The Beta Band, Sportfreunde Stiller, Jimmy Eat World, and The Notwist among others. The second volume includes songs by Oasis, Wir sind Helden, and The Flaming Lips. Once a month, he co-presents the feature Mehmets Schollplatten in the program Nachtmix of the Bayern 2 radio station, which is the culturally oriented channel of the federal public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.”

Since I’m doing the Summer Of Pod at the moment this discovery by Nick is perfect timing. I’ve chosen some (not all) tracks from each of the Scholl mixtapes for your listening pleasure:

There’s an accompanying soundtrack which by the looks Scholl also chose the tracks for this album. On there you can find Decemberists, Mazzy Star, Teenage Fanclub… It is still available at Amazon UK & Amazon USA.

…but that’s not all…

There’s one more band not included above but is a favourite of Mehmet’s. They played live at his farewell match (Bayern v Barcelona) plus he managed to convince them to wear the traditional leiderhosen as they performed at Scholl’s farewell dinner afterwards:

The band are called The Hidden Cameras[int w/lead singer] and I highly recommend you search out any or all of their releases. I didn’t know this band or anything about them until I saw the above clip, after this I had to go and find out more. They are just fantastic.
Nick from Fisted Away pointed me towards three videos of theirs: In The NA, Underage and The Little Bit.